I am somewhat confused about the whole racism against black people in English football. They make up 2% of the population but 30% of the last world cup squad. If as everyone seems to want quotas that reflect the population the biggest loser's will be black people as we add the Asian and white European groups into the squads (the two biggest minority groups). Would people object to quotas on playing sport therefore selecting only at tops 2 black players and adding 4 Asian heritage players into the English football squad? They are looking at quotas for managers why not players?
I think you're conflating a couple of different issues here.
The 'racism against black people in English football' discussion is centred around what I think is recognised as a concerning uptick in racist incidents directed at black players in recent years. Off the top of my head, FA Cup matches at lower levels have been abandoned after players were subjected to racist abuse, there have been incidents of racist abuse in Premier League matches (banana thrown at Aubameyang, Chelsea fans v Sterling, City fans v Fred) visible on national television, and black players, current and former, are receiving horrifically racist messages from trolls on social media. For whatever reason, racists feel emboldened in 2020. It is to highlight and condemn this abuse that players have started taking the knee and 'Black Lives Matter, Say No To Racism' imagery has been made more visible in the game. Nobody is seriously calling for quotas in terms of numbers of players, because there is no widespread issue with individuals being excluded as players because of their race - they are just calling for racist abuse to stop (which, bafflingly, some people still seem to object to).
The quotas issue in regards to black people in positions of authority is, I think, a separate and more subtle issue. Did you see that
report that came out over the summer, that basically concluded that black players, in football commentary, are much more likely to have their physical attributes commented on, or to be defined by them (Yaya Toure, for example, was famously described as a 'beast'), while white players are more likely to be praised for their technical or mental attributes (David Silva, his former midfield partner, was and is still described as 'a little magician')? This might seem insignificant, but I think it does reflect how black players are seen more broadly, and harks back uncomfortably to the animalistic, dehumanising language of the above incidents. Black players are not seen as being intelligent in the same way as white players are - but there is, of course, absolutely no evidence for this. It's inherent bias. This is then reflected in how black players, following retirement, are denied positions of authority in the game; their perceived lack of intelligence means they are not seen as capable of running a club or an organisation. As you say, black players made up 30% of the last world cup squad. I haven't looked up the figures, but I would be willing to believe that, of the professional players in England, that number more or less reflects the proportion more broadly of professional footballers in this country who are black. So why are there only
6 black managers in the EFL and Premier League (rounding up, 7% of all the managers)? Surely, all else being equal, you would expect that number to be at least four times as high, to reflect the number of black players in the game? If this is not explained by systemic racism, what else explains it? (We can see this in individual examples, too: from the 'Golden Generation', Lampard, Gerrard, Gary Neville and Sol Campbell have all gone into management; three of those got plumb jobs right off the bat, at some of the biggest clubs in the world (Chelsea, Rangers and Valencia) while the other started out at Macclesfield, by all accounts did an excellent job, and then went to Southend. Guess which one was the black player? You might say, well, Campbell's a bit of a t**t, who in their right mind would hire him, but A) you don't really have anything to base that on beyond some off the cuff comments he made after being denied the Oxford job, B) that ignores the very good job he did at Macclesfield, which I would imagine a potential employer would take more notice of and C) suggests that Neville was in some way deserving of getting the Valencia job - which he manifestly wasn't. He couldn't even speak the language!)
Quotas are a simple form of positive discrimination that work at achieving substantive (equality of end result, up to a point, or at least opportunity), rather than formal (treat everyone exactly the same, not taking into account historic and ingrained disadvantages) equality. They can be a bit heavy-handed, and I know some BAME managers have criticised them as patronising, but they seem to me to be worthy of at least discussing as a means of addressing this ingrained prejudice against black former players.
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